


winter windows

by quarterelf



Series: hogwarts au [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Gender Dysphoria, Give Jester A Girlfriend, Trans Beauregard (Critical Role), Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 06:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15902538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarterelf/pseuds/quarterelf
Summary: the one where jester and beau are ravenclaws.





	winter windows

**Author's Note:**

> i've been wanting to write a beaujester piece for days and also a hogwarts au so have whatever the fuck this is!

It’s the crying that gets to her. This sort of low, muffled sobbing that makes Beau toss and turn in bed and finally hold her breath, ears straining to pick up on it again just so she knows she’s not going crazy in the middle of the night.

Nothing. And then— _there_ , there it is.

She sits up now, kicking her blanket off, swinging her long legs over the edge of the bed, and peers around the room. It’s pretty dark in the girls’ dormitory, except for the slivers of moonlight peeking through the tower windows, and Beau is just a regular ol’ human without special night vision eyes. Across from her, Jester has the sky blue curtains drawn around her four poster bed, a little bit of light shining through the cracks. Another sob gently shakes the curtains like a passing breeze. _Bingo_.

Part of Beau knows she really just needs to mind her own damn business. Like, who wants someone busting in on them crying, right? It’s fucking embarrassing and awkward for everyone involved. But this other part of Beau, softer, and buried a little deep, remembers crying herself to sleep every night when her dad sent her away. Crying for her mom and crying to any gods she knew the name of.

So, _fuck it_. Beau goes to Jester bed’s and wacks the curtain a couple times. “Knock, knock,” she whispers, and then cringes at her own joke. _Really? You’re gonna open with that, asshole?_

There’s a sniffle, and then a quiet, “Beau?”

“That’s me,” says Beau, poking her head between the curtains. Jester is sitting on top of the covers, a letter in her lap, a chocolate chip cookie in each hand, and her wand glowing softly at her feet. With another sniffle, she stuffs both cookies into her mouth while making complete eye contact with Beau. It’s kind of weird and kind of cute and mostly just perfectly Jester, if she’s being honest.

“You okay, Jes?” 

Jester makes this terrible face and fresh tears roll down her round cheeks. “ _No_.”

Oh, this is definitely not good. “Uh, I heard you crying so I just…” Beau waves her hands around uselessly, searching for the right words and knowing they’ll be the wrong ones anyway. “Wanted to make sure you were okay? But. You’re not. So.” 

With a quiet gasp, Jester claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh, I am so sorry for waking you up!” 

“Nah, it’s cool,” says Beau with a little nonchalant shrug. “Couldn’t really sleep anyway.” It’s not strictly the truth because Jester literally woke her up, but she’s playing it as cool as she can and trying not to make things worse.

“It’s just…” Jester sighs, picking up the letter with hands covered in crumbs. She skims it and then makes that face again, like someone just told her her dog died or something. _Oh, shit!_ What if her dog died? “I really, really, _really_ wanted to go home for winter holidays—” Beau breathes a little sigh of relief that no dogs were harmed. “But my mom said I couldn’t! And I just really miss her and home and everything sooo much and I don’t understand why things have to be like this. I don’t understand at all, Beau.” 

Beau… just can’t relate. She hasn’t been home in years and dreads going back one day, even if just to see her mother; all her summers are spent at the monastery now. But she’s not an idiot, not a complete one anyway, so she sits on Jester’s bed, accidentally close enough to feel the heat rolling off the tiefling’s body and, _wow_. Just… wow.

“Well, uh, I’m gonna be here for the holidays. As usual. So… you know, we could always hang? If you want,” says Beau, staring at this spot on Jester’s shoulder that a braver girl would have put her hand on by now. Maybe even squeezed, just to be comforting and _normal_.

Jester gives her a big, watery smile. “I would really like that. If we could just hang. Yeah.” She leans in and wraps a soft, grateful arm around Beau, her head coming to rest on her shoulder. Her horns are a little uncomfortable at this angle, or maybe that’s just every angle when you’re a tiefling, but Beau’s soul is basically leaving her body because another girl is _touching_ her.

“The food’s pretty good here on Christmas,” says Beau suddenly, “and like Hogsmeade is beyond fucking beautiful this time of year, and I still like to get ice cream at that little parlour because they have this special peppermint flavour—” Oh, Gods, Beau knows she’s babbling. The problem is she can’t stop. The problem is if she does Jester will stop touching her, and Beau will have to go back to bed. _Alone_. With all these weird thoughts about her friend.

Jester giggles and puts a chubby blue finger to Beau’s lips to stop her nonsense. “You are so _veeery_ cute when you’re nervous, did you know that?” she whispers, smiling just wide enough for Beau to see her little fangs.

It’s like being punched in the jaw. Hard. And Beau would know, because, well, of course someone would smack Beau upside the face. “You think I’m cute?” she asks, a little dazed and a little confused. Her and cute, they don’t really mesh, do they? Not when she’s six feet tall and still has to shave the stubborn hairs that grow on her upper lip.

Jester rolls her eyes. “Of course!” She makes it sound so damn easy. Maybe it just is for everyone that’s not Beau.

“Well,” Beau begins, wetting her lips, gathering her courage slowly, heart beating like a marching drum. “I, uh, think you’re pretty cute yourself?” She can’t help but pull the sentence up at the end into a question like some kind of dumbass that’s never spoken words to a real life girl.

“I thought so!” Jester says, a little smugly. She turns on the bed until she’s face to face with Beau. She’s so close Beau can see the drying tears on her lashes and smell the chocolate on her breath and count the dark freckles the span across the bright blue of her cheeks like, _something_ , something too beautiful and far beyond Beau’s few miserable years spent on this earth. For the wildest second she thinks maybe, just maybe Jester is going to kiss her, and Beau holds her breath until her lungs feel like they’re going to pop and her heart is going to float up to the ceiling.

“Do you want to _kiiiss_ me?” teases Jester, and holy shit, this is really happening, isn’t it?

All the air slowly leaks out of her now, and Beau nods so carefully, as if she’s going to suddenly discover she’s been asleep this whole time and this is all some bizarre but amazing dream.

“Then,” and Jester somehow manages to get closer without actually touching her, “maybe you should.”

 _Okay_. Okay, Beau’s got this. She can do this. She squeezes her eyes shut, says a little prayer to Ioun, and closes the tiny gap between their face lips first like a fish. Her mouth bumps into the soft corner of Jester’s, making the other girl giggle, and then Jester’s hand is in her hair, gently re-aligning her until their lips meet properly this time.

Gods, but Beau swears she stars. Something just clicks into place inside her, in her heart and soul, in the whole swirling universe around her. This is it. This is what she wants to be doing for the rest of her life: kissing girls.

Jester breaks the kiss first, pressing her forehead to Beau’s and looking at her like she can read every wild thought running through her mind, eyes bright with mischief and fondness.

“How was that?” she asks, feigning innocence. There’s no way she can miss that she just rocked Beau’s entire fucking world.

Beau just smiles, slow and amazed. “Good,” she says. “Beyond good, actually.”

“I think,” Jester says, warm, warm hands coming to rest on each of Beau’s cheeks, “you should do it again.”

Well, how can a gal say no to that?

*

In the morning Beau receives two parcels: one from her mother, which instantly puts her in a good mood, and one from her father, which instantly tears it back down and sets it on fire. Frowning, she tears open her father’s parcel first, and her face falls. Inside is a set of bottle green dress robes, which on its own is tacky and _so_ not her, but they’re obviously cut in a men’s style. _He sent her men’s robes_.

“Fuck you, fuck you,” she snarls under her breath, tearing at the fabric with her bare hands until her fingers hurt. Then she tosses the robes on the floor and kicks them under her bed, picks up her feather pillow, and lets out a muffled scream. 

Maybe she’ll forget all about them.

And maybe she won’t; maybe one day she’ll take the robes out to the lawn to set on fire and think of her father’s face as she watches them burn.

Just then Jester walks in swinging her bookbag and singing a silly little song. She takes one good look at Beau’s face and stops in her tracks. “What’s wrong?” she asks quietly.

“Nothing,” Beau lies, but she wishes she didn’t have to; she wishes Jester instantly knew all the fucked up shit in her life without her having to lay her heart out in excruciating detail.

Most of all, she wishes Jester would just hug her tight and never let go.

*

Hogsmeade is pretty as a postcard today, just like Beau knew it would be. It’s her favourite thing about visiting over the holidays: the soft, pillowy snow covering the ground and all the cute little thatched roofs, the enchanted candles strung up in the Christmas trees, every shop decorated with baubles and holly. She’d never admit it but, she kind of likes seeing everyone around here look so fucking _happy_ , like if she got close enough some of that happiness would rub off on her, too.

Jester hangs over her arm and coos over all the decorations, dragging Beau up to the trees so she can play with the magic flames glowing on the ends of the candles. She does this for, oh, about a good twenty minutes, and Beau just _lets_ her, feeling this weirdly good bubble in her chest at Jester’s joy over the simplest bullshit in life. There’s something different between them now, different in a good way, she thinks. Like, maybe they upgraded their friendship? Though Jester hasn’t tried to kiss her since before the holidays. Gods, but Beau really wishes they can kiss again, and soon.

“What are you thinking about?” Jester asks suddenly, leaning her head against Beau’s shoulder. Snowflakes are gathering on her horns and Beau gently reaches over to dust them off to buy herself a second of time. 

“Um, Quidditch practice,” Beau lies, looking down at her big black boots as she kicks up a bit of powdery snow. “Gotta stay on top of my game, you know?”

Jester just hums thoughtfully. “Okay, but what are you really thinking about?”

 _Fuck_. Beau hesitates. Would Jester be mad if she knew the truth? Does kissing a girl twice mean you can entertain every one of the dumb thoughts about her in your head? She really doesn’t know, and not knowing things scares the shit out of her.

“Beau?” Jester comes to stand in front of her now, looking up at her from under the longest lashes Beau has ever seen. She takes one of Beau’s hands between both of her own, rubbing it softly between her pink mittens. Jester is far too cute for her own good, and it’s kind of killing Beau. Slowly but surely.

“I’m…” Beau looks away, feeling heat bloom under her cheeks. “I’m thinking about you, okay? We good?”

Jester’s whole face lights up. “And what are you thinking about me?” She steps closer, grabbing the ends of Beau’s Ravenclaw scarf and toying with their frayed edges. Whenever she breathes out the little white clouds waft in Beau’s face.

Oh Gods, she really is going to die.

“I, uh. Ha.” _Use your words, Beau._ “Just… you. Everything about you? How pretty you are. How you can put away three plates of chips like it’s nothing.” Jester giggles, but Beau just presses on valiantly. “And, really, don’t… take this the wrong way, but I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.”

“Oh.” Jester’s mouth falls open in a perfect little ‘o’. It’s completely fucking unreadable, and there is real fear like a little dagger of ice in Beau’s heart.

Here it is, the moment of truth. 

“Beau…” But something is wrong: Jester is smiling. “I really, really, _really_ want to kiss you, too.”

 _Oh_.

It feels like all the bones in Beau’s body have turned to gelatin, warm and gooey. Her mind is swimming, her heart is in her throat, her stomach is doing backflips. Everything is just completely out of whack inside her and doing the weirdest shit and she can’t make it stop. “Say that again,” Beau murmurs weakly.

Jester bounces happily on her heels, reaching up to grab Beau by the cheeks. “I want to kiss you!”

“Then,” and Beau, trembling and anxious, remembers these words like she knows the back of her own wand, "maybe you should.”

Jester pulls her down for the softest, warmest kiss ever and Beau’s heart just stops.

*

Jester is everything, and everything is Jester.

Beau’s never had a girlfriend before. She can’t stop talking about her, to anyone that will listen—and anyone that _won’t_ —about how perfect and soft and _blue_ she is. Part of her can’t wait to write the biggest _fuck you_ letter to her dad and tell him, too.

“Did you really have to tell Professor Shakäste, though?” asks Jester. Beau’s head in is her lap, eyes shut as she lets Jester card her dark tiefling nails through her long hair. Special girlfriend privileges.

Beau pretends to think about it for all of about a second. “Yep.”

Jester just laughs and rubs Beau’s scalp until she’s leaning up for it like a cat. “You’re a very silly girl.”

“Yeah, but I’m totally _your_ girl, right?” asks Beau, cracking one eye open and smiling smugly.

“Oh, absolutely! _My_ very silly girl.” 

Things are going to be all right.


End file.
